Fic: For a Splash of the Sun - Glee/The New Normal, Bryan/Blaine/David, PG-13
Title: For a Splash of the Sun
Fandom(s): Glee/The New Normal
Pairing: Bryan Collins/Blaine Anderson/David Sawyer
Rating: PG-13 (for now)
Word Count: 8k + so far
Summary: In a world where genetics rather than gender determine the ability to bear a child, Blaine Anderson becomes the surrogate for baby Sawyer-Collins. And then he becomes much more...
AO3
With the first look David gets of Mr. Blaine Devon Anderson, he knows that - if he does this - people are going to tell him that he's crazy.
"Did you see his video, David?" Bryan goes on and on. "He's perfect for us! He's smart, he has a singing voice to die for, he's gay, and he looks like a young-"
"Me," David says, keeping his voice carefully neutral.
"David," Rocky says at exactly the same time.
Bryan cocks his head to the side and squints, like he's just seeing the resemblance now, and says, "Huh. I was going to say a young Burt Reynolds, but yeah. I can see what you're saying."
Rocky gives David a look that she will later elaborate on when she and David are in private.
Specifically, she will elaborate that: "David, you are not going to bring that boy in here, looking like a younger and more stylishly dressed you, and let him carry your boyfriend's baby! Do you want to be Mr. Bryan Collins someday... or the first Mr. Bryan Collins?"
The fact that it's going to be both Bryan's and David's baby that their surrogate will carry - or, if you want to get technical, David's baby, seeing as they've decided to combine David's sperm with their donor's egg - will not calm Rocky's misgivings.
In the moment, Rocky just says, "He looks like David but he dresses like you." Which gets Bryan going on what a good sign it is that Blaine knows to wear that color cardigan in the fall and that he appreciates that particular designer's new fall line.
David would have called what Blaine is wearing in the video a "sweater". And he would have called it "pink", not salmon... And he has absolutely no idea who Riscardo d'Ofronio is. He couldn't pronounce the name if it was written down for him and enunciated by a speech coach.
But David agrees to meet Blaine for the same reason that he gives Rocky when she confronts him on the issue: David trusts Bryan. He trusts his boyfriend not to fall in love with and run off on David with a younger, more artistically talented, brown-eyed, child-bearing version of himself...
At least he thought he did.
Then they get to the clinic and shake hands with-
"Mr. Anderson?"
"Blaine. Please, call me Blaine... I am such a huge fan of your show, Mr. Collins! Seriously. It is... It's ground-breaking! And it's a real honor to meet you."
And Blaine's voice is even "dreamier" in person than it had been on the video - soft but deep, singing Bryan's praises with obvious - almost painfully obvious - sincerity.
Bryan preens, soaking up the fanboying like a sponge, while Blaine turns his ridiculously handsome young face and his ridiculously warm, coffee-colored eyes in David's direction, and says, "And you are...?"
David can't be sure (he very rarely resorts to violence) but he thinks that, in this moment, he wants to hit the kid.
"David Sawyer," he says, ignoring the look that Bryan gives him (which David can only interpret to mean 'isn't he adorable?' or 'let's keep him') but stepping closer to Bryan's side, all the same. If someone were to interpret the look that David gives Blaine? It would say" 'back the fuck off, bitch'. But Blaine doesn't seem to see it. "I'm the other father."
"Oh!" Blaine is immediately, honestly apologetic. And he blushes so bright, that even David - regardless of how much he may already, pre-emptively, hate the little shit - feels just the tiniest bit charmed. Bryan practically swoons. "I- I am so sorry... You're just- You're so young, and I read in the file that Mr- that you're a doctor. But of course you would be- I'm so sorry," Blaine babbles. "I'm just nervous, and I wasn't thinking-"
"Of course! Don't you worry about it, sweetie," Bryan is quick to comfort David's rep- their first choice in surrogate. He even steps to Blaine's side and wraps an arm around his shoulder. The kid starts blushing again, and David has to call on every ounce of self control within him not to shove the kid off of his boyfriend and drag Bryan back to their car, away from the clear and present danger looking up at Bryan through thick, dark lashes; shy, and smelling like some sort of expensive cologne and raspberries. "He does look too young to be a doctor, doesn't he?" Bryan is saying, raking David from head-to-toe with a gaze that makes David's skin heat. "Too hot, too."
"Bryan."
Blaine looks like he might swoon, trying to decide how to respond to that, and David isn't cruel, even if he is - he's only now realizing - incredibly jealous.
However, David's situation hasn't changed. People would say that he'd be crazy to allow Blaine to be his and Bryan's surrogate... and they'd be right. He'd be absolutely, no question, without any doubt nuts to-
"David, Blaine has to carry our baby!" Bryan says, later, as they discuss the day's meetings in their bedroom. David's stomach sinks. "There's just something about him! Didn't you feel it?" David felt something alright. And apparently, David thinks - swallowing, so did Bryan.
It would be crazy of David to let this happen. How many failed relationships - just here in California, in Hollywood - how many failed marriages and domestic partnerships could have been saved if this couple had hired the nice, sensible, matronly old woman as their nanny instead of the lithe, Swedish supermodel? If that director or executive had hired a Bart or a Walter as his personal assistant, and not an Antonio or a Jean-Claude...
David should tell Bryan no and put his foot down on the subject... insist that they hire mousy Esther Davis as their surrogate, or the accountant with the receding hairline - Thomas. Anyone, anyone, besides Blaine too-perfect-to-be-real Devon Anderson.
But David can see how much it means to Bryan that their surrogate be more than just a bungalow where their baby can hide out until its ready to make its debut into the world. Bryan wants their surrogate to be someone who Bryan and David can relate to as a person. If David is afraid that Bryan may be able to relate to Blaine a little bit too well... Well, David is just going to have to learn how to deal with that. Because David is crazy. Crazy about Bryan Collins. He wants what Bryan wants.
And when he tells Bryan, "Okay. We'll tell Blaine he's the one..."
David can almost convince himself that this will be enough to keep his jealousy at bay over the many months to come.
++~++
Unfortunately, self-discipline is easier talked about than summoned into being. David manages to muster enough blind optimism to seem as excited as Bryan and Blaine when they have Blaine over for dinner to tell him the "good" news. (He even feels a little chocked up himself, when Blaine - in quavering voice - tells them that he thought the dinner was going to be their way of letting him down easy and his eyes fill with tears.) During their first trip with Blaine to the doctor (where Bryan grows impatient and talks David into sneaking into Blaine's examination room with him to get the official word, and they accidentally walk in on Blaine with his shirt still off) David doesn't try to cover Bryan's eyes with his hands, to keep him from ogling Blaine's sculpted abs, or yell at Blaine to get dressed. And when Bryan starts inviting Blaine to the set of Sing! on a more-or-less regular basis (because Bryan has not-so-secretly made it his mission to a) find out why Blaine isn't already pursuing a career in the performing arts and b) figure out how this may be to Sing!'s benefit) David doesn't complain.
He may grumble, to himself, about it during the quiet times at work.
He may answer Rocky's knowing looks in his direction (which David always reads as being variations on a disapproving, 'I told you so, you damn fool, didn't I?') with a perpetual scowl.
He may even have nightmares... or whatever you call it when you daydream about really unpleasant things - of what Bryan and Blaine get up to, all alone, in Bryan's office at the studio (complete with black and white backdrops furnished with 1970s-era props David's seen on episodes of Mad Men and Bryan looking stupidly sexy in a three piece suit and a fedora.)
But David doesn't complain.
And, still, Bryan calls him on his shit shortly after they receive the wonderful news that Blaine is now pregnant with David's son or daughter.
It's been a long day. It's flu season, David's busiest time of the year, and today marks the first day that Bryan has taken Blaine back to the studio.
David knows that Bryan won't have escorted Blaine around the set announcing his pregnancy or handing out 'It's a Boy And/Or Girl!' cigars or anything... No one is even supposed to know about Blaine's official capacity, for Blaine's protection, on account of Bryan's quasi-celebrity as the producer of such a popular television show.
But someone neglected to remind David's imagination of this, and he's worked himself into a rather impressively bad (albeit pretending-to-be-cool) bad mood by the time he's lying in bed, waiting for Bryan to get out of the bathroom so they can turn off the lights and go to sleep.
Bryan crawls under the covers and David turns off the lamp at his bedside. But Bryan doesn't turn off the lamp at his. Instead he slides across the mattress, his intent clear in the look in the eyes, the smile on his face, even before he slides a hand down David's chest and begins to nuzzle under David's chin.
David's jealous. But he's not an idiot. His dick stirs in his pajama pants before Bryan's lips ever touch his skin. "Mm," he moans into Bryan's attentions. Sometimes, when things get really crazy at the practice or on the set, they can go days without having sex. "Somebody's feeling frisky this evening."
Bryan's worked his way down David's torso and nips at the skin just above the waistline of David's pants. "And somebody's feeling grumpy... Again." Bryan moves to kneel between David's legs, spreading them to accomodate him better. He keeps grinning even after David's smile freezes on his face. "So, do you want to talk about your problem with Blaine now? Or do I have to suck the truth out of you." Then he rubs his knuckles along the length of David's hardening dick, through the cotton of David's pajamas, in a way that would normally make David happy to talk about anything Bryan might want to talk about, just so long as he keeps working the flesh beneath his fingertips.
But right now David is just overcome with a sudden, uncontrollable, anger that Bryan would bring up Blaine here. Doing this. In David's mind, it is irrational but undeniable proof that all of David's fears are valid.
"What?"
Bryan sighs. He rises up on his haunches and smirks as if blind to David's glare. "Right. Talking it is. David, I get that having Blaine as our surrogate has been difficult for you... What I don't get is why."
Bryan rests his palms on the tops of his thighs and quirks an eyebrow at David in an adorably Bryan way that David just can't bring himself to care about right now. If Bryan doesn't "get" it, David honestly can't see how.
"By all accounts, you and he should get along like gangbusters," Bryan says. "Blaine's... perfect and you're perfect. Together, you should be, like, perfection squared. Instead, I feel like, if I'm going to leave you two alone in a room, I'd better come back with bandaids and bacitracin for after the claws come out."
David is only momentarily distracted from their discussion by the professional urge to inform Brian, "Aganocides are less likely than bacitracin to cause dermatitis when used to treat a small wound." But neither that, nor Bryan's fond expression when David "goes all doctor on" him, can hold David back from saying, "And I don't think it's catty to find it 'difficult' stomaching my boyfriend spending just about his every spare moment fawning over a younger, prettier, fertile version of myself!"
Possibly...
What David considered "dealing with it" - or practicing self-discipline - has actually just been him bottling up all of his feelings of inadequacy over not being to bear his child himself - and anxiety over allowing another attractive, alluring young man to do it - until now, when it seems that every emotion he has has been primed to explode in a burst of ugly, melodramatic words that don't even truly represent what he actually fears.
Bryan's wide eyes and the silence that falls over the bedroom are enough to deflate David's anger, to make him realize that he may have overreacted just now... A little bit.
But it's too late. Because that "bottle" of David's blew up right in Bryan's face, and Bryan is not at all the type of person who's just going to put up with that.
"...excuse me?"
"Bry-"
"Did you just imply that I'm- That I would- David, do you think I'm cheating on you with Blaine?"
Brian tenses. Overreaction or no, it irks him that Bryan would say this like the idea is preposterous. David trusts Bryan... Really; he does - but Blaine Anderson is sex on a stick with a voice to match. If David knows this, then Bryan sure as hell does.
Brian climbs off of the bed and stands, hands on his hips, like he's the one with a reason to be angry right now.
"Of all the hot young things with a nice ass and a little star power that I find myself surrounded by daily, you think that the one carrying our child is the one I would choose to fuck around on you with!"
That is not the right thing to say.
Bryan looks like he knows it, immediately. "Oh, David, honey, I-"
But that is cold comfort to David in this moment. It is unprecedented how very quickly and totally this night has gone wrong, and David knows instinctually that it's only going to get worse if he doesn't take drastic steps not to let it.
David stands too. "You know, Bry... I think I'm going to sleep in the guestroom tonight."
"David..."
"I knew this was a bad idea!" David can't help but say as he grabs his pillow. "A crazy idea! I knew it, the second that I saw him..."
"He isn't the one obsessed with the thought of me and him fucking!" Bryan shouts back, just as David makes it to the bedroom door.
The accusation hits a little too close to home, and David is glad that dim lamplight is all that illuminates his face as he turns for a parting shot.
"And who decided that our paying him gives him as much right to your time and to your space as the guy you share a bed with, Bryan?"
David has only the image of Bryan's stricken face, lit by the glow of the lamp and the moonlight spilling through their french doors, to share a bed with him this night, and for the next three nights besides.
++~++
When David thinks about it (and he has plenty of time to think - lying in bed, alone, for the next few nights; enduring breakfasts and dinners filled with little more than small talk with Bryan) it's no surprise that Bryan had picked up on where David's mind has been since Blaine came into their lives.
David hadn't meant to accuse Bryan of flaunting Blaine in front of him... Or of spending too much of his time with Blaine, although Bryan does spend a significant portion of his free time with Blaine, and not just to talk about the baby or to do things related to the baby like visit doctors or research prenatal options.
The thing is, outside of their trips to the studio, the only time that Blaine and Bryan spend together they spend with David as well. When Blaine comes over to watch American Idol and The Voice with Brian (and laugh at Bryan's colorful commentary on the contestants and the judges) he stays to catch a game with David. When Bryan invites Blaine over for dinner, he brings David's favorite wine with him (David isn't quite sure how Blaine knows David's favorites, but he does) and he divides his attention equally between Bryan and David, even when David can't bring himself to answer Blaine's polite questions in more than a word or refuses to let Blaine pull him into a debate he's having with Bryan over this Broadway musical or that fashion faux pas.
David probably spends too much of that time trying not to stare at Blaine's brown eyes, the sleek but firm muscles of his arms, imagining what Bryan thinks when he looks at them. What he feels... what he may have done or want to do.
It's all incredibly, stupidly, unfair because Bryan is right. David and Blaine should get along like a house on fire. Blaine may like showtunes and reading Marie Clare and cooking, and he may have an actual beauty regimine (that is more complex than a) find soap, b) apply soap, c) rinse off soap) like Bryan, but he likes sports, too, like David. He even likes the same ones and the same teams... He likes movies and t.v. shows that Bryan could care less about but that David has been known to get a little borderline fanboyish about himself. He likes comic books and - honest to god - he was once a boyscout. It almost physically pained David, during the conversation in which he found this out, to restrain himself from questioning Blaine about what level he got to, what kind of patches he earned, whether or not he's kept in touch with any of his old troop members...
If Blaine was somebody that David had met at the gym, or at the practice, or in line at a coffee shop... they would have been fast friends. Or if, by some peculiar, inexplicable twist of fate (having caused Blaine to be born blind or with incredibly bad tastes) Blaine had proven himself to be completely immune to Bryan Collins's charms, David might still have bonded with him by now. (Although David isn't all too sure about that; how could he possibly relate to a man who doesn't see anything in as amazing and as enchanting a person as Bryan?)
But instead, David knows that Bryan could fall for Blaine if he let himself. He knows that Blaine could fall for Bryan... that maybe he already has. The enthusiasm Blaine showed upon first meeting Bryan hasn't dimmed at all since he's seen behind the curtain at the Sing! stuido, or since it became clear than all he has to do is say 'yes' to get Bryan to secure him a spot on it - quite the opposite. Blaine dotes on Bryan... And that may not pose any sort of danger to David at all, despite what he may have felt upon meeting Blaine, because David has gotten to know Blaine and he knows Blaine to be a remarkably genuine, kind, and sympathetic human being.
But the potential for heartbreak that Blaine poses remains, and so David has done little, since asking Blaine to carry his and Bryan's child, but look for reasons to hate the young man that might simply not exist.
Bryan was right. And while David may have been too pigheaded to see it before, he isn't too proud to do something about it now.
He calls Bryan after work and tells him that he may be home late.
Bryan says nothing for a long moment. And then, quietly, and without any sign of what he might be thinking, he says, "I wish you wouldn't."
David's heart just about breaks. He sighs. "I'm not- Sweetheart, I'm not trying to draw this stupid... awful fight of ours out any longer than it already has been. I'm just going to go and talk to Blaine, alright? And then I'll be home."
Bryan's hopeful, "Alright. I love you?" doesn't help David's heart any, but it gives him a good feeling about the conversation he's about to have.
"I love you too, Bryan," David says, signing off. And then he texts Blaine to ask if he can stop to talk to him about something important.
David is already driving in that direction when Blaine texts back an ambiguous 'Okay' twenty minutes later.
++~++
Introspection is a humbling thing.
Now that David has accepted that he may be unfair in the way that he's been treating Blaine, he can see how nervous and eager to please Blaine is in his presence like he never has before.
Maybe it's just that David has rarely been alone with Blaine, but somehow he doesn't think that that's it. He recognizes the shy smile Blaine gives him at the door... the way Blaine almost bounces in his seat as he perches on his couch (close enough to David not to be accused of trying to put distance between himself and his guest, but not so close that David could accuse him of disrespecting David's personal space) like he's ready to jump up and fetch David a glass of water or whatever else he might ask for at a second's notice.
If Bryan's tired tone over the phone hadn't been enough to make David feel like a heel before, the way Blaine is acting now would have done it. Blaine isn't just nervous around David, David suddenly realizes.
Blaine is terrified.
The paranoid half of David's brain wants to take this as further fuel for his jealous imagination, but the patient half tells that side to shut up. David's never been the kind to jump to conclusions and ask questions later, and on the cusp of fatherhood is exactly the wrong time to start.
David lets the small talk (what little there is) peter off and then he wipes the suddenly sweaty palms of his hands on his jeans and gets to the point.
He looks at the magazines on Blaine's coffee table - an endearing mixture of interests displayed in Blaine's reading choices - fashion mags mixed with entertainment reviews, SciFi Weekly and Sports Illustrated - to the framed photos on Blaine's living room wall, allowing himself to be distracted by questions of who the smiling, attractive young people in the photos are to Blaine - anything really, to stop David from looking at Blaine himself.
"So. Blaine... You've probably noticed that things have been a little bit... strained between me and Bryan these last few days..." David begins.
There's no way Blaine hasn't. Blaine wasn't a fixture in the Collins-Sawyer household before; they didn't have him over every day. But on most days, at least one of them would answer his call or Bryan would text him about this or that. Since their fight, David knows that Bryan hasn't met with Blaine. He made a point of telling David each night that he doesn't "flaunt Blaine behind your back." And if Bryan's been talking to Blaine on the phone about anything besides the baby, then he hasn't done it around David. One night, Bryan's phone buzzed several times while Bryan pointedly ignored it, and then David's cell phone rang, revealing Blaine as the concerned caller. David grit his teeth and told Bryan he had better make sure that nothing was wrong with the baby, and Bryan texted Blaine to do just that, jabbing the buttons on his phone with such force, David's sure that the auto-correct function on his phone had to work twice as hard to make the message he was typing intelligible.
"Oh, god, I'm- I'm so sorry..."
Blaine's soft, horrified words instantly derail the apology that David was about to make.
"What?"
"I guess Bryan told you about- He said he wouldn't," Blaine says, freezing David's blood in his veins. "-if it didn't become a problem. He thought it was kind of funny... that he and I both- And he said that you'd probably get over it, if you knew, but I guess- I guess not."
Had David thought that his heart was close to breaking before? It pounds, painfully, in his chest now. David's almost certain he can feel it preparing to tear itself open.
He's ridiculously glad that it's Blaine who's having trouble looking at him now, staring at his hands... at the blank screen of the tv hanging on the wall. David doesn't know what's on his face in this moment, but he's sure that he doesn't want anyone else to see it.
"What?" he repeats, in more of a breath than actual words, not certain he wants Blaine to keep talking.
"I didn't mean to- I just can't help... feeling-" Blaine says, and that makes the decision for David.
He definitely doesn't want Blaine to keep talking.
"Blaine-" David starts, surprised to find his hands curled into fists in his lap.
"I would never do anything about it," Blaine says suddenly, like he's desperate to get the words out before David does or says anything in response - like David has to know this, and David's heart pauses in its self-destruct sequence. Blaine looks David dead on, and damn if David doesn't still see honesty in his big, brown eyes. "I was never planning to come onto you or anything. I didn't even tell Bryan... he just seemed to know and-"
There's something very interesting in what Blaine's just said, but David can only focus on one major revealation at a time, and this one is more important.
"You- You and Bryan haven't..."
Blaine looks at him, confusion seeping into the guilt and embarrassment plain on his face, and finally his eyes widen as he realizes what David is aking. "Bryan and- No! Of course n- I'd never do that to you... or to Bryan, I couldn't."
"But you..." David's heart thaw and starts beating again, perhaps too quickly, too soon. David almost feels woozy with it, when it hits him what Blaine is implying. "You said that you have feelings-"
Blaine squirms. He goes back to looking terrified instead of miserable - or now maybe he looks miserable and terrified. He stares at his hands again.
"I, um... I do. For you." David makes an admirable effort, and somehow, his jaw succeeds in not having dropped. "But it's just a crush, I'm sure. It'll pass. It doesn't mean anything," Blaine goes on and on, sounding awfully, painfully unable to convince himself. "I know you don't like me like... well, like anything. And that- that's fine..."
David feels like he's suddenly been dropped into an alternate universe, like one you might find in some of the science fiction novels that he - and Blaine, actually - has read. He almost wants to go back to thinking that Bryan and Blaine are fucking every time David turns his back. 'He thought it was kind of funny... that he and I both-' Blaine said. Bryan thinks it's funny, Blaine was saying, that Bryan and Blaine both have feelings... for David. If that's true, then the way David's been treating Blaine... giving him curt responses and a thousand yard stare over the dinner table, the cold shoulder everywhere else- It's the kind of behavior you'd expect from a jilted lover towards some young asshole trying to steal his boyfriend, but towards an innocent kid with an unrequited crush...
'I know you don't like me, Blaine's just said. Having feelings for someone who can't return them is never easy. But to have them for someone who - Blaine may be too polite to say it, but David knows he himself deserves no such kindness - acts like he hates the poor kid-
"Oh, Blaine... I don't- I don't not like you," David says. "This has all been just... a terrible misunderstanding."
Like something one of Bryan's writers might have happen on his show!
"Did you really think that I... that I've been sleeping with Bryan?" Blaine asks, like he has to make himself says the words. He even blushes again, and without the haze of jealousy clouding David's vision, the effect is even more charming to David.
He shakes his head like he's dozing off and trying not to. "I- I didn't know what to think. You're... well. You." David can tell right away that Blaine has no idea what David means by that, which ups Blaine's charm factor even higher. (And Bryan can't imagine how David could think that Bryan is having an affair with this kid? It's like he was created to tempt a man to stray.) "You're sweet and you're charming and talented... and you have to know how you look, Blaine. If Bryan put you on his show, the fans would go crazy... The other actors would go on strike because you'd steal every scene."
It's only once David's noticed that Blaine is staring at him, wide-eyed, that he wonders where all of this is coming from and makes himself stop.
And Blaine immediately cuts in, saying, "But you're all of those things, too, David. And you're mature and so... so confident. You don't have to figure out what you want to do with your life because you're doing it! You help people, you let me be a part of this amazing thing you and Bryan are trying to accomplish, starting a family, even though you obviously would have chosen someone else as your surrogate, just because Bryan asked you to..."
The procedure to implant David and Bryan's embryo into Blaine just took a couple of weeks ago, so of course Blaine is nowhere near to showing... but he still presses an unconscious hand to his flat stomach as he talks about his surrogacy, and David is reminded of another thing that his jealousy has blinded him to - that he has tried, and failed, to focus on throughout this entire struggle with his feelings about Blaine's part in everything. From the very beginning, Blaine has been nothing but positive, enthusiastic, evengrateful over being allowed to carry David and Bryan's baby. He's allowed them full access to his regular check-ups at the clinic, even though - while he may be carrying their embryo - it's his body being examined. He didn't bat an eye when Bryan and David barged into his examination room that day, and saw him half naked. He playfully rolls his eyes and says something teasing whenever Bryan questions his diet or David reminds him to take his prenatal vitamins in a certain order, but he answers all of Bryan's questions honestly, accepts Bryan's recommendations, and follows David's advice without question.
Whatever the reason that Blaine wanted to become a surrogate in the first place, he isn't just allowing David and Bryan's baby to live inside of him for nine months because they're paying him. He's nurturing David and Bryan's baby because Blaine legitimately cares about doing his job well. He cares about the baby. And, from what David can now tell, about both its fathers, also.
Humbled. That is definitely how David feels right now.
And Blaine isn't finished making him feel it, either.
"Can I... can I tell you something?" he asks, and doesn't take David's questioning look as an answer. "Something that Bryan told me. He said not to repeat it, and it's not that I don't keep my word, usually, but it just seems like maybe you need to hear it and-"
"What did Bryan tell you, Blaine?" David says at last, saving them both from more of Blaine's awkward explanations.
"The third time Bryan invited me to the studio, this guy... Rocky said he was a gaffer, but I think Bryan fired him after this - anyway... This guy said something... rude about why Bryan kept bringing me around the studio," Blaine begins. "...letting me try out the sound equipment on the sets, and treating me like I'm an actor who might want to audition for a part, even though I haven't done anything for that to be, like, an option."
David watches Blaine's face as he tells his story, remembering the video Blaine turned in with his surrogacy application. The clinic had told him, he said when Bryan asked him about it, that he should try and give prospective clients a real "feel" for who he is as a person, and Blaine said that he couldn't imagine being able to do that without involving music. This is where Bryan's quest to find out why Blaine isn't attending a performing arts school or already contracted with a talent agency began, but David stubbornly dismissed Blaine's choice as a lack of motivation. (There's no denying, in watching Blaine sing, for a second, that he isn't lacking in talent.) David figured that Blaine simply didn't want to put in the hard work that Bryan tells him is involved in getting anywhere good in show business.
But as Blaine talks, David can see that that is nowhere near the case... Blaine wants to perform. Wants it, maybe, the way David wants to help people - which is the reason he couldn't settle for studying anything other than medicine. Blaine can see what being on the Sing! set was like for Blaine, in the way he talks about his trips to the studio, the expressions that cross his face, and suddenly Bryan's insistence on bringing Blaine back again and again makes so much more sense.
"Basically, the guy insinuated that I was sleeping with Bryan to try and get onto the show," Blaine says, looking uncomfortable but bravely facing David and not coloring, this time, at the mere mention of sex. "Bryan could tell that I'd overheard, so he and I talked about it. He asked me if I'm attracted to him."
David's pulse picks back up to where it had been when he thought Blaine was confessing to having an affair with Bryan. Just like that... with no lag time. He's as wary of where Blaine is going with this as he is confused by why thinking that Blaine had just admitted to having sex with Bryan, earlier, had made David want to throw up, while hearing Blaine talk about being attracted to Bryan now- David shifts in his seat, ostensibly to face Blaine more directly. But secretly because- If David didn't know any better... He'd say that what Blaine is telling him was turning him on.
"And... I said yes," Blaine says. David can't imagine why he thought that David needed to hear this. But then Blaine continues, "And I said that I knew he wasn't interested, and he told me- He, uh, told me-" Blaine struggles obviously with the words, and if David's heart was beating oddly fast before, it's practically pounding as Blaine repeats Bryan's words. "'Blaine,'" Blaine says, "'you are, without a doubt, the hottest young thing to walk into my life in some time, and you're a great guy to boot. I can already tell that I could fall for you with no problem.'"
David makes himself breathe evenly and, since he can't think of what to think about that, he tries not to think anything at all until Blaine finishes saying what he felt he had to say to David. "Okay."
Blaine smiles. David is not entirely prepared for how the smile hits him in this weird space that they've slipped into, where David is no longer afraid or angry but doesn't know what else to be.
"And then he said," Blaine goes on, and David can practically hear Bryan, in his head, saying the words, "'the thing is... I'm already in love with David. Like, 'can't quit him'... 'wherefore art thou', love love. And he and I are in it for the long haul, so unless he says different, you and I? We have to keep things purely platonic.'"
David chuffs out something almost like a laugh. That sounds like Bryan.
But then David sees Blaine's face crumple, and though he's not sure what brought that serious look onto Blaine's eyes - at this exact second - he's surprised at himself by how much he suddenly wishes he could take it away, nevermind that they've just been talking about David's boyfriend casually outlining his thoughts on having sex with someone other than David.
"Which is what I want too, you know," Blaine is saying. "The last thing I could ever want is to hurt Bryan, or you, or what you have together. I- I've hurt someone like that, before... kinda, and it ruined my life. I'd never want to do that again, even if you and Bryan weren't so amazing and hadn't been so nice to me and-"
"Hey." It will talk David a long while to figure out how he got from hoping that he doesn't lose control and punch Blaine - to sliding across the couch and pulling Blaine to him - all in one night. But in the moment, all David seems to be aware of is the shine of Blaine's eyes and the unnatural stillness of his face as what he says becomes more and more upsetting to him. Like all of those emotions that were crossing his face before could only do so because he allowed them to, and now what wants to get out of his head is so difficult to manage, Blaine has clamped it down, shut it out. It doesn't seem right. Blaine is one of the most expressive people that David's ever met, and he's been living with Bryan for two years.
David pulls Blaine close, one hand on each of Blaine's shoulders, Blaine looking at him through those insanely fine lashes like he doesn't understand how this is happening.
"Blaine, it's alright. I don't think you're trying to steal my boyfriend," David reassures, their foreheads nearly touching.
Or David tries to. Blaine doesn't look convinced. "I don't. It's alright. I'm sorry that I've treated you like... like I have been. That was about me more than you. It's never sat well with me that I can't carry my own children. It was a major issue between my parents, that Mom couldn't carry and Dad wouldn't and I guess... I have more baggage because of that than I realized."
It shocks David almost as much as it obviously does Blaine that he spontaneously shares this with his surrogate, but once the words are out there's nothing that David can do but own them.
So they just sit there like that, something heavy and indefinable in the air, with David almost holding Blaine but not quite, and Blaine trying to get himself back under control, for David doesn't know how long.
When David can't stand it any longer - he hugs people all the time, Bryan, his friends, even his mother; there's no reason he should hesitate this much to hug the man carrying his baby - he pulls Blaine to him the rest of the way, and Blaine goes as if it's a gift that David's giving to him. He buries his face in David's shoulder and his hands ball immediately in the sides of David's shirt, as if he's afraid that David will change his mind and shove him away at any moment.
"It's alright," David says into the top of Blaine's head, breathing in the scent of his hair gel. "It's okay." He loops his arms loosely over Blaine's back.
He almost doesn't hear Blaine when Blaine says, so softly, "I will be."
++~++
When David gets home that night, Bryan is already in bed. David locks the front door back behind him, puts away his wallet and his keys, kicks off his shoes, and waits for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of their house before padding into the bedroom rather than turning on any lights.
He hesitates, at the foot of his bed, knowing that - even though he's gotten over himself - there's no guarantee that Bryan is ready to forget the accusation that put David in the guest room in the first place.
In the dark, it's like Bryan can hear him debating, because he says, as if he hadn't been pretending to be asleep only moments before, "You know, you're the one who kicked yourself to the couch... Remember?"
David's so thankful that he could cry... but he thinks that there's been quite enough of that tonight already.
He slips into bed on his side but doesn't move to touch the form lying too still beside him.
"You know, technically..." he says, trying but failing to put a tone of lightness into his voice. "I kicked myself to the lavishly decorated guest house."
"You wanna argue semantics or get over here and cuddle me?" Bryan asks, putting the question beneath David's attempt at teasing to bed.
David doesn't have to be asked twice. He curls into Bryan's side, more thankful than he could say - in words or tears - for the arms that instantly embrace him or the way that lying his head on Bryan's chest and hearing the familiar thud of his heartbeat beneath him feels, truly, like coming home.
"I do trust you, Bryan, not to fuck around on me," he has to say, at last - at last - allowing the veil of anger to slip away and his voice to crack with the hurt that has dogged him for all of these weeks.
"Oh, David... Sweetie." Bryan holds him all the tighter, curls so that he can reach the side of David's face with his lips and peppers whatever he can reach with kisses.
"I do... I didn't meant to- I shouldn't have..."
"I'm not your mother, David," Bryan says. And of course he would know exactly what the problem really is, without David even telling him. "I wouldn't dream of holding anything about you, anything that makes you you, against you. And I'm not your father... I wouldn't abandon you or replace you even if I did."
David clings to Bryan so tightly it must hurt, but Bryan doesn't complain one bit.
"I love you, Bryan, you know that? You are an amazing man, and I love you."
Bryan kisses him again, this time on the top of his head - the way David had kissed Blaine - and the sudden memory, the comparison, even inside his own head, startles David for a moment.
"I love you, too," Bryan tells him. Then his voice goes strangely flat, careful. "David, Blaine is pregnant. With our baby. It's too late to change that. If it really bothers you, having him around, I-" Bryan's words taper off, Bryan obviously reluctant to voice what he's getting at in its entirety.
David stops him. "I'm sorry, Bry," he says, and feels Bryan tense. "No, not- I'm sorry I didn't talk to you about how I was feeling instead of letting my imagination run away with me." Bryan relaxes and David squeezes him. "I don't want to change anything. I'm glad that Blaine is carrying our baby. And you're right... He's going to be taking care of our child for the next nine months. We can't treat him like a stranger. It wouldn't be fair to him and- And it wouldn't feel right for us."
Bryan is quiet for a long moment. In the dark, David can't make out the expression on his face, even when he rises up to see it better.
"Well, look at you," Bryan says, the slight shake of his hand as he runs his fingers through David's hair belying the playful tone of his voice. "Dr. David Sawyer..." Bryan leans up to kiss him, and when David lays back down beside him, they shift so that Bryan is lying with his head on David's chest. "I think you just admitted that you like our pretty surrogate."
David grabs for the spot beneath Bryan's ribs where he's the most ticklish. The ensuing scuffle ends when David crushes his mouth to Bryan's. The day has been too emotionally exhausting for either of them to be seriously invested in doing more than some pretty enthusiastic making out, but make out they do, and David loves it. After the silence and the tension of the last few days - and the uncertainty of the weeks that came before - it's almost as good as sex to have Bryan snuggled up next to him, sighing contentedly, his own lips swollen from Bryan's teeth and kisses, afterwards.
Then Bryan goes suddenly, unaccountably still.
"Uh... David?"
"Yeah, baby?"
"Should I worry about you liking Blaine too much?"
"What?" David can't really account for the brief thud of his heart either.
"Your shirt smells just like him," Bryan says, his voice not accusing but not entirely at ease either.
David can't think of a thing to say to that.
"Uh... We bonded?"
"I assume you don't mean over a mutual love of giving each other blowjobs or something."
"Bryan!"
"Just checking."
[tbc]
Fandom(s): Glee/The New Normal
Pairing: Bryan Collins/Blaine Anderson/David Sawyer
Rating: PG-13 (for now)
Word Count: 8k + so far
Summary: In a world where genetics rather than gender determine the ability to bear a child, Blaine Anderson becomes the surrogate for baby Sawyer-Collins. And then he becomes much more...
AO3
With the first look David gets of Mr. Blaine Devon Anderson, he knows that - if he does this - people are going to tell him that he's crazy.
"Did you see his video, David?" Bryan goes on and on. "He's perfect for us! He's smart, he has a singing voice to die for, he's gay, and he looks like a young-"
"Me," David says, keeping his voice carefully neutral.
"David," Rocky says at exactly the same time.
Bryan cocks his head to the side and squints, like he's just seeing the resemblance now, and says, "Huh. I was going to say a young Burt Reynolds, but yeah. I can see what you're saying."
Rocky gives David a look that she will later elaborate on when she and David are in private.
Specifically, she will elaborate that: "David, you are not going to bring that boy in here, looking like a younger and more stylishly dressed you, and let him carry your boyfriend's baby! Do you want to be Mr. Bryan Collins someday... or the first Mr. Bryan Collins?"
The fact that it's going to be both Bryan's and David's baby that their surrogate will carry - or, if you want to get technical, David's baby, seeing as they've decided to combine David's sperm with their donor's egg - will not calm Rocky's misgivings.
In the moment, Rocky just says, "He looks like David but he dresses like you." Which gets Bryan going on what a good sign it is that Blaine knows to wear that color cardigan in the fall and that he appreciates that particular designer's new fall line.
David would have called what Blaine is wearing in the video a "sweater". And he would have called it "pink", not salmon... And he has absolutely no idea who Riscardo d'Ofronio is. He couldn't pronounce the name if it was written down for him and enunciated by a speech coach.
But David agrees to meet Blaine for the same reason that he gives Rocky when she confronts him on the issue: David trusts Bryan. He trusts his boyfriend not to fall in love with and run off on David with a younger, more artistically talented, brown-eyed, child-bearing version of himself...
At least he thought he did.
Then they get to the clinic and shake hands with-
"Mr. Anderson?"
"Blaine. Please, call me Blaine... I am such a huge fan of your show, Mr. Collins! Seriously. It is... It's ground-breaking! And it's a real honor to meet you."
And Blaine's voice is even "dreamier" in person than it had been on the video - soft but deep, singing Bryan's praises with obvious - almost painfully obvious - sincerity.
Bryan preens, soaking up the fanboying like a sponge, while Blaine turns his ridiculously handsome young face and his ridiculously warm, coffee-colored eyes in David's direction, and says, "And you are...?"
David can't be sure (he very rarely resorts to violence) but he thinks that, in this moment, he wants to hit the kid.
"David Sawyer," he says, ignoring the look that Bryan gives him (which David can only interpret to mean 'isn't he adorable?' or 'let's keep him') but stepping closer to Bryan's side, all the same. If someone were to interpret the look that David gives Blaine? It would say" 'back the fuck off, bitch'. But Blaine doesn't seem to see it. "I'm the other father."
"Oh!" Blaine is immediately, honestly apologetic. And he blushes so bright, that even David - regardless of how much he may already, pre-emptively, hate the little shit - feels just the tiniest bit charmed. Bryan practically swoons. "I- I am so sorry... You're just- You're so young, and I read in the file that Mr- that you're a doctor. But of course you would be- I'm so sorry," Blaine babbles. "I'm just nervous, and I wasn't thinking-"
"Of course! Don't you worry about it, sweetie," Bryan is quick to comfort David's rep- their first choice in surrogate. He even steps to Blaine's side and wraps an arm around his shoulder. The kid starts blushing again, and David has to call on every ounce of self control within him not to shove the kid off of his boyfriend and drag Bryan back to their car, away from the clear and present danger looking up at Bryan through thick, dark lashes; shy, and smelling like some sort of expensive cologne and raspberries. "He does look too young to be a doctor, doesn't he?" Bryan is saying, raking David from head-to-toe with a gaze that makes David's skin heat. "Too hot, too."
"Bryan."
Blaine looks like he might swoon, trying to decide how to respond to that, and David isn't cruel, even if he is - he's only now realizing - incredibly jealous.
However, David's situation hasn't changed. People would say that he'd be crazy to allow Blaine to be his and Bryan's surrogate... and they'd be right. He'd be absolutely, no question, without any doubt nuts to-
"David, Blaine has to carry our baby!" Bryan says, later, as they discuss the day's meetings in their bedroom. David's stomach sinks. "There's just something about him! Didn't you feel it?" David felt something alright. And apparently, David thinks - swallowing, so did Bryan.
It would be crazy of David to let this happen. How many failed relationships - just here in California, in Hollywood - how many failed marriages and domestic partnerships could have been saved if this couple had hired the nice, sensible, matronly old woman as their nanny instead of the lithe, Swedish supermodel? If that director or executive had hired a Bart or a Walter as his personal assistant, and not an Antonio or a Jean-Claude...
David should tell Bryan no and put his foot down on the subject... insist that they hire mousy Esther Davis as their surrogate, or the accountant with the receding hairline - Thomas. Anyone, anyone, besides Blaine too-perfect-to-be-real Devon Anderson.
But David can see how much it means to Bryan that their surrogate be more than just a bungalow where their baby can hide out until its ready to make its debut into the world. Bryan wants their surrogate to be someone who Bryan and David can relate to as a person. If David is afraid that Bryan may be able to relate to Blaine a little bit too well... Well, David is just going to have to learn how to deal with that. Because David is crazy. Crazy about Bryan Collins. He wants what Bryan wants.
And when he tells Bryan, "Okay. We'll tell Blaine he's the one..."
David can almost convince himself that this will be enough to keep his jealousy at bay over the many months to come.
++~++
Unfortunately, self-discipline is easier talked about than summoned into being. David manages to muster enough blind optimism to seem as excited as Bryan and Blaine when they have Blaine over for dinner to tell him the "good" news. (He even feels a little chocked up himself, when Blaine - in quavering voice - tells them that he thought the dinner was going to be their way of letting him down easy and his eyes fill with tears.) During their first trip with Blaine to the doctor (where Bryan grows impatient and talks David into sneaking into Blaine's examination room with him to get the official word, and they accidentally walk in on Blaine with his shirt still off) David doesn't try to cover Bryan's eyes with his hands, to keep him from ogling Blaine's sculpted abs, or yell at Blaine to get dressed. And when Bryan starts inviting Blaine to the set of Sing! on a more-or-less regular basis (because Bryan has not-so-secretly made it his mission to a) find out why Blaine isn't already pursuing a career in the performing arts and b) figure out how this may be to Sing!'s benefit) David doesn't complain.
He may grumble, to himself, about it during the quiet times at work.
He may answer Rocky's knowing looks in his direction (which David always reads as being variations on a disapproving, 'I told you so, you damn fool, didn't I?') with a perpetual scowl.
He may even have nightmares... or whatever you call it when you daydream about really unpleasant things - of what Bryan and Blaine get up to, all alone, in Bryan's office at the studio (complete with black and white backdrops furnished with 1970s-era props David's seen on episodes of Mad Men and Bryan looking stupidly sexy in a three piece suit and a fedora.)
But David doesn't complain.
And, still, Bryan calls him on his shit shortly after they receive the wonderful news that Blaine is now pregnant with David's son or daughter.
It's been a long day. It's flu season, David's busiest time of the year, and today marks the first day that Bryan has taken Blaine back to the studio.
David knows that Bryan won't have escorted Blaine around the set announcing his pregnancy or handing out 'It's a Boy And/Or Girl!' cigars or anything... No one is even supposed to know about Blaine's official capacity, for Blaine's protection, on account of Bryan's quasi-celebrity as the producer of such a popular television show.
But someone neglected to remind David's imagination of this, and he's worked himself into a rather impressively bad (albeit pretending-to-be-cool) bad mood by the time he's lying in bed, waiting for Bryan to get out of the bathroom so they can turn off the lights and go to sleep.
Bryan crawls under the covers and David turns off the lamp at his bedside. But Bryan doesn't turn off the lamp at his. Instead he slides across the mattress, his intent clear in the look in the eyes, the smile on his face, even before he slides a hand down David's chest and begins to nuzzle under David's chin.
David's jealous. But he's not an idiot. His dick stirs in his pajama pants before Bryan's lips ever touch his skin. "Mm," he moans into Bryan's attentions. Sometimes, when things get really crazy at the practice or on the set, they can go days without having sex. "Somebody's feeling frisky this evening."
Bryan's worked his way down David's torso and nips at the skin just above the waistline of David's pants. "And somebody's feeling grumpy... Again." Bryan moves to kneel between David's legs, spreading them to accomodate him better. He keeps grinning even after David's smile freezes on his face. "So, do you want to talk about your problem with Blaine now? Or do I have to suck the truth out of you." Then he rubs his knuckles along the length of David's hardening dick, through the cotton of David's pajamas, in a way that would normally make David happy to talk about anything Bryan might want to talk about, just so long as he keeps working the flesh beneath his fingertips.
But right now David is just overcome with a sudden, uncontrollable, anger that Bryan would bring up Blaine here. Doing this. In David's mind, it is irrational but undeniable proof that all of David's fears are valid.
"What?"
Bryan sighs. He rises up on his haunches and smirks as if blind to David's glare. "Right. Talking it is. David, I get that having Blaine as our surrogate has been difficult for you... What I don't get is why."
Bryan rests his palms on the tops of his thighs and quirks an eyebrow at David in an adorably Bryan way that David just can't bring himself to care about right now. If Bryan doesn't "get" it, David honestly can't see how.
"By all accounts, you and he should get along like gangbusters," Bryan says. "Blaine's... perfect and you're perfect. Together, you should be, like, perfection squared. Instead, I feel like, if I'm going to leave you two alone in a room, I'd better come back with bandaids and bacitracin for after the claws come out."
David is only momentarily distracted from their discussion by the professional urge to inform Brian, "Aganocides are less likely than bacitracin to cause dermatitis when used to treat a small wound." But neither that, nor Bryan's fond expression when David "goes all doctor on" him, can hold David back from saying, "And I don't think it's catty to find it 'difficult' stomaching my boyfriend spending just about his every spare moment fawning over a younger, prettier, fertile version of myself!"
Possibly...
What David considered "dealing with it" - or practicing self-discipline - has actually just been him bottling up all of his feelings of inadequacy over not being to bear his child himself - and anxiety over allowing another attractive, alluring young man to do it - until now, when it seems that every emotion he has has been primed to explode in a burst of ugly, melodramatic words that don't even truly represent what he actually fears.
Bryan's wide eyes and the silence that falls over the bedroom are enough to deflate David's anger, to make him realize that he may have overreacted just now... A little bit.
But it's too late. Because that "bottle" of David's blew up right in Bryan's face, and Bryan is not at all the type of person who's just going to put up with that.
"...excuse me?"
"Bry-"
"Did you just imply that I'm- That I would- David, do you think I'm cheating on you with Blaine?"
Brian tenses. Overreaction or no, it irks him that Bryan would say this like the idea is preposterous. David trusts Bryan... Really; he does - but Blaine Anderson is sex on a stick with a voice to match. If David knows this, then Bryan sure as hell does.
Brian climbs off of the bed and stands, hands on his hips, like he's the one with a reason to be angry right now.
"Of all the hot young things with a nice ass and a little star power that I find myself surrounded by daily, you think that the one carrying our child is the one I would choose to fuck around on you with!"
That is not the right thing to say.
Bryan looks like he knows it, immediately. "Oh, David, honey, I-"
But that is cold comfort to David in this moment. It is unprecedented how very quickly and totally this night has gone wrong, and David knows instinctually that it's only going to get worse if he doesn't take drastic steps not to let it.
David stands too. "You know, Bry... I think I'm going to sleep in the guestroom tonight."
"David..."
"I knew this was a bad idea!" David can't help but say as he grabs his pillow. "A crazy idea! I knew it, the second that I saw him..."
"He isn't the one obsessed with the thought of me and him fucking!" Bryan shouts back, just as David makes it to the bedroom door.
The accusation hits a little too close to home, and David is glad that dim lamplight is all that illuminates his face as he turns for a parting shot.
"And who decided that our paying him gives him as much right to your time and to your space as the guy you share a bed with, Bryan?"
David has only the image of Bryan's stricken face, lit by the glow of the lamp and the moonlight spilling through their french doors, to share a bed with him this night, and for the next three nights besides.
++~++
When David thinks about it (and he has plenty of time to think - lying in bed, alone, for the next few nights; enduring breakfasts and dinners filled with little more than small talk with Bryan) it's no surprise that Bryan had picked up on where David's mind has been since Blaine came into their lives.
David hadn't meant to accuse Bryan of flaunting Blaine in front of him... Or of spending too much of his time with Blaine, although Bryan does spend a significant portion of his free time with Blaine, and not just to talk about the baby or to do things related to the baby like visit doctors or research prenatal options.
The thing is, outside of their trips to the studio, the only time that Blaine and Bryan spend together they spend with David as well. When Blaine comes over to watch American Idol and The Voice with Brian (and laugh at Bryan's colorful commentary on the contestants and the judges) he stays to catch a game with David. When Bryan invites Blaine over for dinner, he brings David's favorite wine with him (David isn't quite sure how Blaine knows David's favorites, but he does) and he divides his attention equally between Bryan and David, even when David can't bring himself to answer Blaine's polite questions in more than a word or refuses to let Blaine pull him into a debate he's having with Bryan over this Broadway musical or that fashion faux pas.
David probably spends too much of that time trying not to stare at Blaine's brown eyes, the sleek but firm muscles of his arms, imagining what Bryan thinks when he looks at them. What he feels... what he may have done or want to do.
It's all incredibly, stupidly, unfair because Bryan is right. David and Blaine should get along like a house on fire. Blaine may like showtunes and reading Marie Clare and cooking, and he may have an actual beauty regimine (that is more complex than a) find soap, b) apply soap, c) rinse off soap) like Bryan, but he likes sports, too, like David. He even likes the same ones and the same teams... He likes movies and t.v. shows that Bryan could care less about but that David has been known to get a little borderline fanboyish about himself. He likes comic books and - honest to god - he was once a boyscout. It almost physically pained David, during the conversation in which he found this out, to restrain himself from questioning Blaine about what level he got to, what kind of patches he earned, whether or not he's kept in touch with any of his old troop members...
If Blaine was somebody that David had met at the gym, or at the practice, or in line at a coffee shop... they would have been fast friends. Or if, by some peculiar, inexplicable twist of fate (having caused Blaine to be born blind or with incredibly bad tastes) Blaine had proven himself to be completely immune to Bryan Collins's charms, David might still have bonded with him by now. (Although David isn't all too sure about that; how could he possibly relate to a man who doesn't see anything in as amazing and as enchanting a person as Bryan?)
But instead, David knows that Bryan could fall for Blaine if he let himself. He knows that Blaine could fall for Bryan... that maybe he already has. The enthusiasm Blaine showed upon first meeting Bryan hasn't dimmed at all since he's seen behind the curtain at the Sing! stuido, or since it became clear than all he has to do is say 'yes' to get Bryan to secure him a spot on it - quite the opposite. Blaine dotes on Bryan... And that may not pose any sort of danger to David at all, despite what he may have felt upon meeting Blaine, because David has gotten to know Blaine and he knows Blaine to be a remarkably genuine, kind, and sympathetic human being.
But the potential for heartbreak that Blaine poses remains, and so David has done little, since asking Blaine to carry his and Bryan's child, but look for reasons to hate the young man that might simply not exist.
Bryan was right. And while David may have been too pigheaded to see it before, he isn't too proud to do something about it now.
He calls Bryan after work and tells him that he may be home late.
Bryan says nothing for a long moment. And then, quietly, and without any sign of what he might be thinking, he says, "I wish you wouldn't."
David's heart just about breaks. He sighs. "I'm not- Sweetheart, I'm not trying to draw this stupid... awful fight of ours out any longer than it already has been. I'm just going to go and talk to Blaine, alright? And then I'll be home."
Bryan's hopeful, "Alright. I love you?" doesn't help David's heart any, but it gives him a good feeling about the conversation he's about to have.
"I love you too, Bryan," David says, signing off. And then he texts Blaine to ask if he can stop to talk to him about something important.
David is already driving in that direction when Blaine texts back an ambiguous 'Okay' twenty minutes later.
++~++
Introspection is a humbling thing.
Now that David has accepted that he may be unfair in the way that he's been treating Blaine, he can see how nervous and eager to please Blaine is in his presence like he never has before.
Maybe it's just that David has rarely been alone with Blaine, but somehow he doesn't think that that's it. He recognizes the shy smile Blaine gives him at the door... the way Blaine almost bounces in his seat as he perches on his couch (close enough to David not to be accused of trying to put distance between himself and his guest, but not so close that David could accuse him of disrespecting David's personal space) like he's ready to jump up and fetch David a glass of water or whatever else he might ask for at a second's notice.
If Bryan's tired tone over the phone hadn't been enough to make David feel like a heel before, the way Blaine is acting now would have done it. Blaine isn't just nervous around David, David suddenly realizes.
Blaine is terrified.
The paranoid half of David's brain wants to take this as further fuel for his jealous imagination, but the patient half tells that side to shut up. David's never been the kind to jump to conclusions and ask questions later, and on the cusp of fatherhood is exactly the wrong time to start.
David lets the small talk (what little there is) peter off and then he wipes the suddenly sweaty palms of his hands on his jeans and gets to the point.
He looks at the magazines on Blaine's coffee table - an endearing mixture of interests displayed in Blaine's reading choices - fashion mags mixed with entertainment reviews, SciFi Weekly and Sports Illustrated - to the framed photos on Blaine's living room wall, allowing himself to be distracted by questions of who the smiling, attractive young people in the photos are to Blaine - anything really, to stop David from looking at Blaine himself.
"So. Blaine... You've probably noticed that things have been a little bit... strained between me and Bryan these last few days..." David begins.
There's no way Blaine hasn't. Blaine wasn't a fixture in the Collins-Sawyer household before; they didn't have him over every day. But on most days, at least one of them would answer his call or Bryan would text him about this or that. Since their fight, David knows that Bryan hasn't met with Blaine. He made a point of telling David each night that he doesn't "flaunt Blaine behind your back." And if Bryan's been talking to Blaine on the phone about anything besides the baby, then he hasn't done it around David. One night, Bryan's phone buzzed several times while Bryan pointedly ignored it, and then David's cell phone rang, revealing Blaine as the concerned caller. David grit his teeth and told Bryan he had better make sure that nothing was wrong with the baby, and Bryan texted Blaine to do just that, jabbing the buttons on his phone with such force, David's sure that the auto-correct function on his phone had to work twice as hard to make the message he was typing intelligible.
"Oh, god, I'm- I'm so sorry..."
Blaine's soft, horrified words instantly derail the apology that David was about to make.
"What?"
"I guess Bryan told you about- He said he wouldn't," Blaine says, freezing David's blood in his veins. "-if it didn't become a problem. He thought it was kind of funny... that he and I both- And he said that you'd probably get over it, if you knew, but I guess- I guess not."
Had David thought that his heart was close to breaking before? It pounds, painfully, in his chest now. David's almost certain he can feel it preparing to tear itself open.
He's ridiculously glad that it's Blaine who's having trouble looking at him now, staring at his hands... at the blank screen of the tv hanging on the wall. David doesn't know what's on his face in this moment, but he's sure that he doesn't want anyone else to see it.
"What?" he repeats, in more of a breath than actual words, not certain he wants Blaine to keep talking.
"I didn't mean to- I just can't help... feeling-" Blaine says, and that makes the decision for David.
He definitely doesn't want Blaine to keep talking.
"Blaine-" David starts, surprised to find his hands curled into fists in his lap.
"I would never do anything about it," Blaine says suddenly, like he's desperate to get the words out before David does or says anything in response - like David has to know this, and David's heart pauses in its self-destruct sequence. Blaine looks David dead on, and damn if David doesn't still see honesty in his big, brown eyes. "I was never planning to come onto you or anything. I didn't even tell Bryan... he just seemed to know and-"
There's something very interesting in what Blaine's just said, but David can only focus on one major revealation at a time, and this one is more important.
"You- You and Bryan haven't..."
Blaine looks at him, confusion seeping into the guilt and embarrassment plain on his face, and finally his eyes widen as he realizes what David is aking. "Bryan and- No! Of course n- I'd never do that to you... or to Bryan, I couldn't."
"But you..." David's heart thaw and starts beating again, perhaps too quickly, too soon. David almost feels woozy with it, when it hits him what Blaine is implying. "You said that you have feelings-"
Blaine squirms. He goes back to looking terrified instead of miserable - or now maybe he looks miserable and terrified. He stares at his hands again.
"I, um... I do. For you." David makes an admirable effort, and somehow, his jaw succeeds in not having dropped. "But it's just a crush, I'm sure. It'll pass. It doesn't mean anything," Blaine goes on and on, sounding awfully, painfully unable to convince himself. "I know you don't like me like... well, like anything. And that- that's fine..."
David feels like he's suddenly been dropped into an alternate universe, like one you might find in some of the science fiction novels that he - and Blaine, actually - has read. He almost wants to go back to thinking that Bryan and Blaine are fucking every time David turns his back. 'He thought it was kind of funny... that he and I both-' Blaine said. Bryan thinks it's funny, Blaine was saying, that Bryan and Blaine both have feelings... for David. If that's true, then the way David's been treating Blaine... giving him curt responses and a thousand yard stare over the dinner table, the cold shoulder everywhere else- It's the kind of behavior you'd expect from a jilted lover towards some young asshole trying to steal his boyfriend, but towards an innocent kid with an unrequited crush...
'I know you don't like me, Blaine's just said. Having feelings for someone who can't return them is never easy. But to have them for someone who - Blaine may be too polite to say it, but David knows he himself deserves no such kindness - acts like he hates the poor kid-
"Oh, Blaine... I don't- I don't not like you," David says. "This has all been just... a terrible misunderstanding."
Like something one of Bryan's writers might have happen on his show!
"Did you really think that I... that I've been sleeping with Bryan?" Blaine asks, like he has to make himself says the words. He even blushes again, and without the haze of jealousy clouding David's vision, the effect is even more charming to David.
He shakes his head like he's dozing off and trying not to. "I- I didn't know what to think. You're... well. You." David can tell right away that Blaine has no idea what David means by that, which ups Blaine's charm factor even higher. (And Bryan can't imagine how David could think that Bryan is having an affair with this kid? It's like he was created to tempt a man to stray.) "You're sweet and you're charming and talented... and you have to know how you look, Blaine. If Bryan put you on his show, the fans would go crazy... The other actors would go on strike because you'd steal every scene."
It's only once David's noticed that Blaine is staring at him, wide-eyed, that he wonders where all of this is coming from and makes himself stop.
And Blaine immediately cuts in, saying, "But you're all of those things, too, David. And you're mature and so... so confident. You don't have to figure out what you want to do with your life because you're doing it! You help people, you let me be a part of this amazing thing you and Bryan are trying to accomplish, starting a family, even though you obviously would have chosen someone else as your surrogate, just because Bryan asked you to..."
The procedure to implant David and Bryan's embryo into Blaine just took a couple of weeks ago, so of course Blaine is nowhere near to showing... but he still presses an unconscious hand to his flat stomach as he talks about his surrogacy, and David is reminded of another thing that his jealousy has blinded him to - that he has tried, and failed, to focus on throughout this entire struggle with his feelings about Blaine's part in everything. From the very beginning, Blaine has been nothing but positive, enthusiastic, evengrateful over being allowed to carry David and Bryan's baby. He's allowed them full access to his regular check-ups at the clinic, even though - while he may be carrying their embryo - it's his body being examined. He didn't bat an eye when Bryan and David barged into his examination room that day, and saw him half naked. He playfully rolls his eyes and says something teasing whenever Bryan questions his diet or David reminds him to take his prenatal vitamins in a certain order, but he answers all of Bryan's questions honestly, accepts Bryan's recommendations, and follows David's advice without question.
Whatever the reason that Blaine wanted to become a surrogate in the first place, he isn't just allowing David and Bryan's baby to live inside of him for nine months because they're paying him. He's nurturing David and Bryan's baby because Blaine legitimately cares about doing his job well. He cares about the baby. And, from what David can now tell, about both its fathers, also.
Humbled. That is definitely how David feels right now.
And Blaine isn't finished making him feel it, either.
"Can I... can I tell you something?" he asks, and doesn't take David's questioning look as an answer. "Something that Bryan told me. He said not to repeat it, and it's not that I don't keep my word, usually, but it just seems like maybe you need to hear it and-"
"What did Bryan tell you, Blaine?" David says at last, saving them both from more of Blaine's awkward explanations.
"The third time Bryan invited me to the studio, this guy... Rocky said he was a gaffer, but I think Bryan fired him after this - anyway... This guy said something... rude about why Bryan kept bringing me around the studio," Blaine begins. "...letting me try out the sound equipment on the sets, and treating me like I'm an actor who might want to audition for a part, even though I haven't done anything for that to be, like, an option."
David watches Blaine's face as he tells his story, remembering the video Blaine turned in with his surrogacy application. The clinic had told him, he said when Bryan asked him about it, that he should try and give prospective clients a real "feel" for who he is as a person, and Blaine said that he couldn't imagine being able to do that without involving music. This is where Bryan's quest to find out why Blaine isn't attending a performing arts school or already contracted with a talent agency began, but David stubbornly dismissed Blaine's choice as a lack of motivation. (There's no denying, in watching Blaine sing, for a second, that he isn't lacking in talent.) David figured that Blaine simply didn't want to put in the hard work that Bryan tells him is involved in getting anywhere good in show business.
But as Blaine talks, David can see that that is nowhere near the case... Blaine wants to perform. Wants it, maybe, the way David wants to help people - which is the reason he couldn't settle for studying anything other than medicine. Blaine can see what being on the Sing! set was like for Blaine, in the way he talks about his trips to the studio, the expressions that cross his face, and suddenly Bryan's insistence on bringing Blaine back again and again makes so much more sense.
"Basically, the guy insinuated that I was sleeping with Bryan to try and get onto the show," Blaine says, looking uncomfortable but bravely facing David and not coloring, this time, at the mere mention of sex. "Bryan could tell that I'd overheard, so he and I talked about it. He asked me if I'm attracted to him."
David's pulse picks back up to where it had been when he thought Blaine was confessing to having an affair with Bryan. Just like that... with no lag time. He's as wary of where Blaine is going with this as he is confused by why thinking that Blaine had just admitted to having sex with Bryan, earlier, had made David want to throw up, while hearing Blaine talk about being attracted to Bryan now- David shifts in his seat, ostensibly to face Blaine more directly. But secretly because- If David didn't know any better... He'd say that what Blaine is telling him was turning him on.
"And... I said yes," Blaine says. David can't imagine why he thought that David needed to hear this. But then Blaine continues, "And I said that I knew he wasn't interested, and he told me- He, uh, told me-" Blaine struggles obviously with the words, and if David's heart was beating oddly fast before, it's practically pounding as Blaine repeats Bryan's words. "'Blaine,'" Blaine says, "'you are, without a doubt, the hottest young thing to walk into my life in some time, and you're a great guy to boot. I can already tell that I could fall for you with no problem.'"
David makes himself breathe evenly and, since he can't think of what to think about that, he tries not to think anything at all until Blaine finishes saying what he felt he had to say to David. "Okay."
Blaine smiles. David is not entirely prepared for how the smile hits him in this weird space that they've slipped into, where David is no longer afraid or angry but doesn't know what else to be.
"And then he said," Blaine goes on, and David can practically hear Bryan, in his head, saying the words, "'the thing is... I'm already in love with David. Like, 'can't quit him'... 'wherefore art thou', love love. And he and I are in it for the long haul, so unless he says different, you and I? We have to keep things purely platonic.'"
David chuffs out something almost like a laugh. That sounds like Bryan.
But then David sees Blaine's face crumple, and though he's not sure what brought that serious look onto Blaine's eyes - at this exact second - he's surprised at himself by how much he suddenly wishes he could take it away, nevermind that they've just been talking about David's boyfriend casually outlining his thoughts on having sex with someone other than David.
"Which is what I want too, you know," Blaine is saying. "The last thing I could ever want is to hurt Bryan, or you, or what you have together. I- I've hurt someone like that, before... kinda, and it ruined my life. I'd never want to do that again, even if you and Bryan weren't so amazing and hadn't been so nice to me and-"
"Hey." It will talk David a long while to figure out how he got from hoping that he doesn't lose control and punch Blaine - to sliding across the couch and pulling Blaine to him - all in one night. But in the moment, all David seems to be aware of is the shine of Blaine's eyes and the unnatural stillness of his face as what he says becomes more and more upsetting to him. Like all of those emotions that were crossing his face before could only do so because he allowed them to, and now what wants to get out of his head is so difficult to manage, Blaine has clamped it down, shut it out. It doesn't seem right. Blaine is one of the most expressive people that David's ever met, and he's been living with Bryan for two years.
David pulls Blaine close, one hand on each of Blaine's shoulders, Blaine looking at him through those insanely fine lashes like he doesn't understand how this is happening.
"Blaine, it's alright. I don't think you're trying to steal my boyfriend," David reassures, their foreheads nearly touching.
Or David tries to. Blaine doesn't look convinced. "I don't. It's alright. I'm sorry that I've treated you like... like I have been. That was about me more than you. It's never sat well with me that I can't carry my own children. It was a major issue between my parents, that Mom couldn't carry and Dad wouldn't and I guess... I have more baggage because of that than I realized."
It shocks David almost as much as it obviously does Blaine that he spontaneously shares this with his surrogate, but once the words are out there's nothing that David can do but own them.
So they just sit there like that, something heavy and indefinable in the air, with David almost holding Blaine but not quite, and Blaine trying to get himself back under control, for David doesn't know how long.
When David can't stand it any longer - he hugs people all the time, Bryan, his friends, even his mother; there's no reason he should hesitate this much to hug the man carrying his baby - he pulls Blaine to him the rest of the way, and Blaine goes as if it's a gift that David's giving to him. He buries his face in David's shoulder and his hands ball immediately in the sides of David's shirt, as if he's afraid that David will change his mind and shove him away at any moment.
"It's alright," David says into the top of Blaine's head, breathing in the scent of his hair gel. "It's okay." He loops his arms loosely over Blaine's back.
He almost doesn't hear Blaine when Blaine says, so softly, "I will be."
++~++
When David gets home that night, Bryan is already in bed. David locks the front door back behind him, puts away his wallet and his keys, kicks off his shoes, and waits for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of their house before padding into the bedroom rather than turning on any lights.
He hesitates, at the foot of his bed, knowing that - even though he's gotten over himself - there's no guarantee that Bryan is ready to forget the accusation that put David in the guest room in the first place.
In the dark, it's like Bryan can hear him debating, because he says, as if he hadn't been pretending to be asleep only moments before, "You know, you're the one who kicked yourself to the couch... Remember?"
David's so thankful that he could cry... but he thinks that there's been quite enough of that tonight already.
He slips into bed on his side but doesn't move to touch the form lying too still beside him.
"You know, technically..." he says, trying but failing to put a tone of lightness into his voice. "I kicked myself to the lavishly decorated guest house."
"You wanna argue semantics or get over here and cuddle me?" Bryan asks, putting the question beneath David's attempt at teasing to bed.
David doesn't have to be asked twice. He curls into Bryan's side, more thankful than he could say - in words or tears - for the arms that instantly embrace him or the way that lying his head on Bryan's chest and hearing the familiar thud of his heartbeat beneath him feels, truly, like coming home.
"I do trust you, Bryan, not to fuck around on me," he has to say, at last - at last - allowing the veil of anger to slip away and his voice to crack with the hurt that has dogged him for all of these weeks.
"Oh, David... Sweetie." Bryan holds him all the tighter, curls so that he can reach the side of David's face with his lips and peppers whatever he can reach with kisses.
"I do... I didn't meant to- I shouldn't have..."
"I'm not your mother, David," Bryan says. And of course he would know exactly what the problem really is, without David even telling him. "I wouldn't dream of holding anything about you, anything that makes you you, against you. And I'm not your father... I wouldn't abandon you or replace you even if I did."
David clings to Bryan so tightly it must hurt, but Bryan doesn't complain one bit.
"I love you, Bryan, you know that? You are an amazing man, and I love you."
Bryan kisses him again, this time on the top of his head - the way David had kissed Blaine - and the sudden memory, the comparison, even inside his own head, startles David for a moment.
"I love you, too," Bryan tells him. Then his voice goes strangely flat, careful. "David, Blaine is pregnant. With our baby. It's too late to change that. If it really bothers you, having him around, I-" Bryan's words taper off, Bryan obviously reluctant to voice what he's getting at in its entirety.
David stops him. "I'm sorry, Bry," he says, and feels Bryan tense. "No, not- I'm sorry I didn't talk to you about how I was feeling instead of letting my imagination run away with me." Bryan relaxes and David squeezes him. "I don't want to change anything. I'm glad that Blaine is carrying our baby. And you're right... He's going to be taking care of our child for the next nine months. We can't treat him like a stranger. It wouldn't be fair to him and- And it wouldn't feel right for us."
Bryan is quiet for a long moment. In the dark, David can't make out the expression on his face, even when he rises up to see it better.
"Well, look at you," Bryan says, the slight shake of his hand as he runs his fingers through David's hair belying the playful tone of his voice. "Dr. David Sawyer..." Bryan leans up to kiss him, and when David lays back down beside him, they shift so that Bryan is lying with his head on David's chest. "I think you just admitted that you like our pretty surrogate."
David grabs for the spot beneath Bryan's ribs where he's the most ticklish. The ensuing scuffle ends when David crushes his mouth to Bryan's. The day has been too emotionally exhausting for either of them to be seriously invested in doing more than some pretty enthusiastic making out, but make out they do, and David loves it. After the silence and the tension of the last few days - and the uncertainty of the weeks that came before - it's almost as good as sex to have Bryan snuggled up next to him, sighing contentedly, his own lips swollen from Bryan's teeth and kisses, afterwards.
Then Bryan goes suddenly, unaccountably still.
"Uh... David?"
"Yeah, baby?"
"Should I worry about you liking Blaine too much?"
"What?" David can't really account for the brief thud of his heart either.
"Your shirt smells just like him," Bryan says, his voice not accusing but not entirely at ease either.
David can't think of a thing to say to that.
"Uh... We bonded?"
"I assume you don't mean over a mutual love of giving each other blowjobs or something."
"Bryan!"
"Just checking."
[tbc]